Description
TASTING NOTES
These disks are made of 70% single origin Dominican dark chocolate, bursting with bold, wine-like flavour, accompanied by Taza’s signature gritty texture. Taza tell us that this is the “purest expression” of their proudly unrefined chocolate. We enjoyed the delicious, fruity notes. This is an unusual chocolate that is very easy to munch!
Annalisa Barbieri, The Observer’s chocolate correspondent, writes in her series Notes on Chocolate that “Taza chocolate is resolutely not silky-smooth chocolate but stone ground, so it’s rustic, a bit caveman, gritty, rough. If you like your coffee ristretto, Taza is the chocolate for you.
ABOUT THE MAKER
Alex Whitmore, the founder of Taza Chocolate, first tried traditional Mexican stone-ground chocolate on a holiday in Oaxaca and was inspired to bring this unique form of chocolate to the US. He apprenticed under a molinero to learn how to craft the very best stone-ground, unrefined chocolate using hand-crafted molinos, or mill stones. This method foregoes the usual refining and conching steps of the chocolate-making process, giving a chocolate closer in style to the original bars of the nineteenth century, still popular in parts of Mexico and South America today.
Taza Chocolate is not like most silky-smooth craft chocolate – because it’s stone ground, the bars are rustic, a bit caveman, gritty and rough. If you like your coffee ristretto, Taza is the chocolate for you. The minimal handling involved in this process creates discs with a satisfyingly coarse, almost biscuit-like texture, and a sweet flavour that lets you taste the bold flavours of the cocoa, sugar and spices individually. This is how the earliest bars of chocolate tasted – it really is a taste of history.
Sabine R. –
It creates a distinct pleasant gritty feel, allowing for detecting the different flavour components due to its coarse structure. It stands out from other makers due to its crunchiness and round shape.